artist: GZA

Song: 4th chamber (feat. RZA, Ghostface Killah and Killah Priest)

The aim for this brief was to use the supplied character geometry and rig them entirely from scratch. The character had to have the face, arms, legs, torso, and hands rigged completely. This meant as well that the weight painting of the character also had to be done so as to not look awkward when creating the walk cycle. 

Very beginning stages, the skeleton is being laid out. 

Once the skeleton structure is laid out then handles are attached to specific joints for the reason that the joints themselves are never animated, only the handles they are parented to. 

The handles are also colour coded with blue on the left and red on the right for ease of animation. 

The hands have now also been individually rigged and keyframed using the set key frame function. 

IK and FK relations are set up as well to calculate the geometry's movement in accordance with the laid out skeleton. The aforementioned handles are then keyframed in the necessary positions in the correct timings in order to create a walk cycle. 

The above image is set into the software to use it as a reference image. The character is then put into the displayed positions at varying postions in time and key framed. Once done the character will have a walk cycle. 

Much like the animation process of the walk cycle, the lip sync is animated by using controllers. This is the face controller, which controls the things seen stated. The individual controllers are then attached to blend shapes of the face that have been created already, by using a process named driven key frames.  

in the example seen here the "E" sound is being articulated and so the E slider is keyed to have a higher value. 

Another example is the 'Blink' controller is also being used to make the character blink and so it too has been assigned a higher value than the rest of the controllers. 

The reason I chose the sound track that I did is because it is from one of my favourite rap songs by GZA, an artist who grew up largely in the ghetto. The reason it is relevant that he grew up in the ghetto and there is a kung fu movie sample in his song is relevant is for the same reason. In the ghetto in America the only movies that black people could afford were kung foo movies because it was intentionally racist on behalf of America, but what resulted is a lot of rap music now references kung fu as a sign of their united oppression in America. 

Conclusion: 

This was a difficult project but I am very grateful to have done it. The process was to follow the lecturer in class but he was very proficient with the software which meant sometimes one would get left behind and you would have to remedy the issues on ones own and that was a huge learning curve. 

The actual content we learned though filled me with excitement because a walk cycle is such a crucial element to any animation and so being able to understand a fundamental part of what makes an animation, made me ver happy. 

The other part of what we learned, the lip sync, is also equally as critical because audio and therefore language really brings an animation to life and so because of that dialogue is so critical to master. 

I would not say that I have mastered either of these two skills yet, however I now have the foundational skills to understand and remedy issues along the way and I believe that can pave the way for mastery.